


From Root to Sky

by romanstopmeowing



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Angst, F/M, mature content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:33:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24002884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanstopmeowing/pseuds/romanstopmeowing
Summary: Momoi clung to the past, and this is all it’s gotten her – a friend who isn’t her friend, a basketballer who hates basketball, and someone who is hers but could never be hers.A beginning, and middle, and middle, and middle -She is so tired of living for Aomine.
Relationships: Aomine Daiki/Momoi Satsuki
Comments: 11
Kudos: 64





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am obsessed with this couple, and had to add in my own cents. Plenty of angst, but the promise for a happy ending.

As far back as Momoi could remember, there was Aomine. But the Aomine of her earliest memory, and the Aomine of now, are so contrary that she could hardly consider them the same friend. Certainly, if the fondness she had for his past self was not so acute, she doubts she could have stayed for as long as she did. 

(As she still is.)

She finds him on the rooftop afterschool, like clockwork. 

‘Aomine-kun, practise is starting in ten minutes,’ she says.

He has a model magazine resting over his eyes, and he makes no gesture to hint that he intends to move. 

‘Aomine-kun! Stop wasting time, the Inter-High match against Kaijo is next week.’

‘Shut up and fuck off.’ He drawls. She wonders if it costs him to make an effort to sound pleasant. He wasn’t always like this, and she wonders, wonders, wonders, when he truly changed.

(She knows when.)

She nudges his side with her foot. ‘Our first match against an old teammate. You would let that slide?’

He doesn’t reply, and once, she would’ve hassled him – nay, nagged, because nagging works – into a response. Once, even a sigh was a sign of victory. But now, she only sees how their exchange would cost her, and lose him nothing. 

(She’s lost too much to him.)

Once upon a time, there was Aomine Daiki, and he was full of joy, and excitement, and boundless energy that he used in order to live. Once upon a time, there was Momoi Satsuki, his best friend, who cheered him on, and joined him, and they swore to take on the world together. She looks at him now, and sees the shadow of somebody that she used to see as an equal.

With no words left, she descends down the stairs, and goes to practise, carefully evading their teammates’ questions. 

Learn your lesson, she wants to say. He won’t come. But when has she ever learnt a lesson with Aomine to even begin berating others to let him go. 

(If you have any sense at all, leave him be, Satsuki, she tells herself.)

-x-  
Once upon a time, there was Aomine Daiki, and he had things to say, and a ball to dribble, and a dream to conquer. Once upon a time, there was Momoi Satsuki, who loved him, and strategized for him, and saw a person worth sacrificing everything for. 

Now, there is Aomine Daiki who doesn’t give a fuck, and Momoi Satsuki, who hovers near the periphery of his life, not knowing how to find a way in, and wondering what the fuck she gave it all up for. She laments her fate that wound itself with hers – first through the friendship of their mothers, and then through their same age, and again through basketball. She wonders if she could’ve ever escaped him.

(The truth is, sometimes a person is somebody else’s last chance, 

and if nobody else could stay for him, 

how could she have left?)

-x- 

They walk home together – a long twenty minutes that she used to fill with chatter. Today, she’s quiet, because she’s mad, but he could hardly tell. For him, she supposes her staying quiet is the best thing he could ask for her. It’s the first time she doesn’t say a word, the first time she doesn’t ask to stop by a vending machine for a coffee.

When they reach their homes, two houses side by side, she decides today is a day of all kinds of firsts, and walks up her lawn without a goodbye. From the corner of her eye, she sees him open his mouth to say something, and then decide against it. She feels his gaze on her until she closes the door behind her.

-x- 

She loves Kuroko because he is a simple boy to love. He’s kind, and calm, and his security in his pure ability to not be visible fills her with affection. She wishes she could’ve followed him to Seirin.

No, she’s not stupid (shut up, she isn’t). She knows the day Kuroko looks at her with anything less than calm indifference is the day Aomine arrives to practise without her losing her arm, leg and voice to get him there. But she sees a love there. A love for his new teammates, his renewed fervour for basketball, and the unbreakable will that she knows will one day win him a game (Generation of Miracles, her ass). 

She ponders this as she watches him eat with Kagami and the Seirin basketball team in a restaurant that she and Aomine pass on their way home. 

When she could see past his collected expression, she could see the content he’s filled with. His losses until now don’t matter – he’s focused on the future. Not like her.

‘What is it?’ Aomine asks, seeing her straying eyes that she quickly focuses on the path ahead of them. 

‘Nothing.’

-x-

Aomine plays on the court, and he’s powerful – more powerful than anybody she’s ever known, because of course he is. She remembers her conversation with Kuroko, and his promise. She wishes he could’ve made good on it, so that Aomine could lose, lose, lose. 

She thinks she’s horrible for thinking it. 

But then she watches him go on-one-on with Kise, and watches him win again, and leave their old teammate crumbled on the ground. She watches Kise’s captain carry him, sees the beginning of a growing bond that could make a team a family. 

She looks to her own boys – that’s what Touou is now, she supposes – and sees nothing but cold calculation, self-satisfying grandeur, and the desire to win above all else. She sees Aomine lose the spark in his eyes that was there for the slightest second when Kise had matched him, sees him flex the hand that she can tell is injured even though he would hardly admit to it now, and the realisation is hardly shocking. 

She hates him. 

-x-

They fight – a real fight. 

In many ways, it’s a reiteration of an argument they’ve had a million times, and in other ways, it’s the first true fight they’ve ever had. It’s on their way home, but they’ve stopped at the divergence of their houses, and they’re almost shouting, even though it’s dark, and the neighbour’s lights are turning on and curtains are being edged open with concern.

‘I’m sick of you,’ she spits. ‘I’m sick of everything you’ve thrown away, and how little you care that you’ve changed.’

‘And why do you care so fucking much?’

‘Because we’re friends!’ She shouts, because it’s true. 

He looks at her, really looks at her, and there’s a darkness in his eyes that fills her with dread and the desire to retract the words.

'We’re hardly friends, Satsuki. You'd do good to just leave me alone.’

It’s a slap, and she flinches, and it hurts, hurts, hurts.

She watches his face change with regret that he hides masks as quickly as it appears. 

‘You always know how to make people feel so small.’

She disappears into the house, resolving to never look upon Aomine Daiki’s face again, because fuck him. 

-x-

She expects a relief to wash over her in the days after their fight. In a way, it does. It drastically clears up her schedule that she doesn’t need to chase him up between classes, or before practise, or afterschool. 

She sees him search for the first day in the place they usually wait for each other, and waits long enough to see him leave. After that, he doesn’t wait, and she’s grateful. That feeling of gratitude is quickly overwhelmed with the keen hollowness she feels inside. 

In class, she feels eyes on her as she packs up her books to get up. She doesn’t need to turn to know that it’s Aomine – arriving to class for once – but when she does, he’s already looking away. Her heart is heavy, and she feels empty, empty, empty, and wonders if this is heartbreak.

(She quickly expels the word because she doesn’t love him.)

-x-  
He’s injured, and she tells the coach to bench him for the final game against Rakuzan. She may not want to look out for him, but she’s hardly going to let him throw away a potential professional basketball career to play one petty game against an old teammate in high school. When Aomine hears it, it’s the first time they’ve talked in a week. 

‘Is this revenge?’ he demands.

‘No,’ she says hotly, because it isn’t, and of course he thinks she’s trying to get back at her when she’s just doing what a friend would do. Ah, but you’re not friends.  
It’s a nasty fight, and it ends in her tears and a magazine thrown in his face, and he’s lucky she didn’t have access to anything heavier because she would’ve hit him harder.  
She seeks solace in Kuroko, and unwittingly in Seirin’s players, and it’s the first time she lets herself cry about it because she’s lost her best friend, and she thinks Kuroko would know better than anybody what it means to lose Aomine. He comforts her, and it helps somewhat to hear from somebody else that Aomine didn’t mean it (platitudes are so shallow), but it helps more that he walks with her, because she hasn’t walked with anybody in a week and she cries because it’s stupid, stupid, stupid.

When they separate, she leaves him with a promise to mend their relationship, and in a way, she means it.

She’s filled with renewed purpose as she walks up the lawn to Aomine’s door, and knocks harder than she should. She knows his parents aren’t home, because hers aren’t either, and that usually means they’re together.

He opens the door, surprised, and he moves back to allow her in. She doesn’t want to step in, because she doesn’t want to stay long, but does so because she wants the neighbours to hear her yell again even less. 

‘Apologise.’ She demands.

He raises a brow.

‘Apologise,’ she repeats. ‘For everything. I gave up everything for you. I was there for you, always. Even when you treated me like shit. Apologise, because if you don’t, I’m not going to come back.’

‘I’m sorry, Satsuki.’ That’s it. 

He said it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says it again, and this time, his voice has an underlying…something. Something that tells her that he means it, but it doesn’t make her feel any better. Instead, it makes her tear up again, and she holds it back because she won’t let him see it.

She slaps his hand away when he reaches for her.

‘It’s not enough.’ She says, and she knows it’s unfair. 

‘Why?’

Why? She could laugh, but the emotions bubble until they leave her in an angry sob. ‘Because I hate you.’ There, she said it. ‘I hate you, and I’m sick of faking that I don’t. I regret following you to Touou. I regret all of it!’ 

And then he’s reaching for her, and he’s smashing their lips together in a clang of teeth that she immediately gives into. He pulls her in, into his arms, and she clings to him with abandon as the wet sounds of their mouths echo in the empty house. Before she knows it, they’re reaching for each other’s clothes with reckless abandon, and he’s shoving her body against the wall and her underwear aside and sinking in his fingers with a harshness that makes her sob. 

Her shirt and skirt is hiked up, his belt unbuckled and pants pulled down, and when he finally sinks in, it’s with an angry thrust that has them shuddering. She tightens her hands in his hair, pulls until it must hurt because he grunts, and she thinks, good. 

It’s hard, and fast, and she must have bruises on her thighs, but it feels so good. Perhaps this is what she needs. What they can’t shout at each other in anger, they can express in motion, but the things he’s muttering in her ear aren’t angry things. The kisses he presses to her ear, sears along her neck are fuelled with more than fury at her actions. They make her think, fuck, fuck…fuck. 

-x- 

The next day, he’s waiting outside her house with the same indifferent expression as always. They’ve made up, she thinks. They walk in silence, and at lunchtime, she finds him again on the roof. They bicker, but he relents to follow her to class. Afterschool, they follow their usual route, and then separate at her door. 

She thinks that’s it. It fills her with hot humiliation, and she spends the evening in bed until she feels a knock on her window at midnight. He enters, and there’s a moment of silence as they stare at each other, and she considers pushing him back out the window – 

And then he grabs her face with a gentleness she’s never associated with him, and pulls her in for a sweet kiss that quickly turns fierce. He fucks her in her own bed – because what else could it be called? 

The orgasm is the single most satisfying thing she’s ever felt, but the euphoria dissipates as soon as he leaves. 

-x- 

They return to normal, and the world has turned the right side up once more. She nags him, he gives her grief, and the fighting tires her out as much as any other. The emptiness in her grows, grows, grows, and she knows this could only go on for so long. Sex is hardly a band aid for any relationship, let alone fix…whatever she and Aomine are.  
Anybody watching them would say that their relationship has taken a turn for the worse, and in a way, it has. It was his strategy, she thinks, to make her forgive him. She doesn’t think she has yet, but that’s neither here nor there. 

But there are moments – stolen moments, in locker rooms, and corners, and in their own beds. And every time he sighed, breath hot in her ear, she died. 

(He is still at loss for nothing, she thinks bitterly, and she is losing everything).

-x- 

In the beginning, she watched him play basketball with an enthusiasm that rivalled the world. In the middle, she watched it dim, the love for the sport disappearing with everything that made Aomine, Aomine. She’s been waiting for the end, because the life is a circle, isn’t it? All good and bad things come to an end, before the cycle starts again, no?

But as she watches him destroy his opponent in a match with a fury that frightens her, she’s struck with the fear that she’s hung on for nothing. She’s clung to the past, but this is all it’s gotten her – a friend who isn’t her friend, a basketballer who hates basketball, and someone who is hers but could never be hers.

After the match, they’re the last ones in the locker room, and he pulls her back to his chest, lips already tracing her neck. His fingers are undoing her shirt, but she grabs his hand, holds it there.

He pauses, and she clutches his hand harder, harder, harder, feels her vision blur. And then, she pulls his hand away, and steps away from him. 

‘I – I can’t. I’m sorry.’ 

She leaves him there, because there is a beginning, and middle, and middle, and middle – 

Momoi is so tired of living for Aomine.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is Aomine's perspective of the events of chapter one, and their relationship afterwards. 
> 
> Plenty of angst ahead, so buckle up.

To anybody who pays attention, which is hardly many, it would come as no shock that Aomine Daiki doesn’t mind Momoi Satsuki’s presence. Their bickering, and the (self-made) crippling nature of their current relationship aside, she is his longest-standing friend, lifelong neighbour, and the only emotional support he’s truly ever had.

(He’d rather let his better hand be broken and be disallowed from basketball for life rather than admit the last one aloud.)

And while he’s inclined to call it social conditioning, Aomine is not oblivious to the fact that Momoi brings him a modicum of peace – accompanied by her otherwise plentiful nagging. 

He’s all the more aware that he brings her the contrary – so much of it, and for so long, that he’s at times prepared himself for the day she might leave. He’d be fine with it, he thinks, until he isn’t.

There’s contentment to be had in the endless badgering she does about his tardiness, laziness, everything-ness that he doesn’t realise until she stops it. He doesn’t realise how much he enjoyed her smiles until she stops offering them as they part ways afterschool, and he forgets how much it meant to know that somebody didn’t forget him until she does.

(No, he doesn’t need others’ affirmations – just hers, and this is only a recent realisation.)

She’s lost hope in him, he realises, and while his initial response is indifference, his later discovery leads him to dreaming of her. 

They’re simple dreams of things they’ve done together. She pulls the blanket off him in the morning, bemoaning the late hour (‘8.45am Aomine-kun! We’re going to be late!’), and drags him out of bed. She chatters away on their walk to school, and finds him at lunch and nags him into eating a balanced meal. 

They fight.

They agree on minor points

And part ways with the expectation to see each other again the next morning to replay the day before.

-x-

It’s not a reality-warping revelation that he enjoys her company, or that he’s even considered her company in bed. He’s lazy, not dead. They’re idle thoughts that are cut short quickly, because he’s ridiculous for thinking he could ever surpass Kuroko in her preferences.

(Why is he thinking of her preferences, anyway? She’s a Friend with an F.)

But there is something about the dimmed light in her eye, the silence they fall into that he’s no longer comfortable in, and the enthusiasm she’s lost for – all of it. Shopping, basketball, school.

(Him.)

‘What is it?’ He asks as they walk home. She’s distracted, eyes straying over her shoulders, and they’re walking slowly enough that he sees the Seirin team in a restaurant they’ve passed. 

‘Nothing.’ She replies, and he’s inclined to push, but that isn’t their relationship. She pushes, he pulls. He’s so unfamiliar with the new dynamics they’ve entered, he leaves it be, until they reach her front door, and she disappears inside, and he wishes he hadn’t.

He lays in bed that night, and somewhere in his chest, he feels an unsettled emotion that he can’t decipher. He hasn’t felt in so long (annoyance doesn’t count), and it’s a simple equation to realise she’s the reason. He knows even more that he needs to sleep because he is neither ready nor interested in understanding why she does this to him. Certainly not why now.

-x-

He dreams of her, and this time, it’s things they’ve never done before. 

He dreams of pulling off her shirt, and her pulling off his.

He dreams of kissing her neck, and hearing her sighs in his ear.

He dreams of straying hands and seeking lips, ragged breaths and pounding hearts – 

He dreams until he wakes up sweaty and aroused, too early to truly get up yet, and lays in bed watching the ceiling until dawn breaks.

-x-

After the game with Kaijo, he watches Kise struggle to recover from their one-on-one. There’s a fire in him that’s been dimmed after being dormant for so long, and he grapples between disappointment, and a sense of relief. He isn’t sure why he feels them, and finds more comfort in the pulsing of his injured hand, because it’s familiar.

What he is sure of is the look in Momoi’s eyes as she watches him line up. The feeling in his chest arises again, and when he meets her gaze straight on, she makes no attempt to mask the emotion before looking away. Resentment, sadness, disappointment – and misery.

He’s hurting her. Why?

(Of course he knows why.)

-x-

They fight, and in a way, it’s one that Momoi seeks, and asks for. 

He sees in how she talks, acts, articulates – the underlying fury is palpable – that it is about so much more than that.

‘I’m sick of you,’ she spits. ‘I’m sick of everything you’ve thrown away, and how little you care that you’ve changed.’ 

Well, that’s rich. 

(And it fucking hurts.)

‘And why do you care so fucking much?’ He demands, because he is neither able nor interested in being the calm-headed one in this argument.

‘Because we’re friends!’

He thinks of how she looks at Kuroko, how she interacts with Kise – he thinks of how she looked at him at the Kaijo match. He feels the sting in the gaze, even now, and his chest is hurting again, and he clenches his fists in his pockets, because he is never one to not come out on top in an argument.

‘We’re hardly friends, Satsuki. You’d do good to just leave me alone.’ He says it because it’s true. Their relationship had long since stopped being one between friends, and not for the better. He says it because it’s true – he wants her to leave him alone, because maybe she’ll be happier, and she’ll stop hating him, and yes, because he wants her to hate him enough to finally stop being stupid. It’s all true, but he regrets it as soon as he says it, before she flinches, and her face closes. 

(Fuck.)

‘You always know how to make people feel so small.’ She turns away, walks up the lawn to her house, and he’s rooted to the ground and filled with a sudden need to stop her. He has more to say, he thinks. He’s not ready to walk away yet. 

But the door closes, and the words are caged behind his teeth.

-x-

They don’t talk for a week, and it’s the most miserable week he’s ever had (he’s man enough to admit that.)

In a way, he had hoped it would be like every other fight they’ve had, but it isn’t. She doesn’t wait for him in the morning, and he doesn’t see her all of the first day afterwards until he spots her hiding behind a building, waiting for him to leave first. He’d been waiting for her, but he’s hardly going to force her to walk with him. 

In the following days, he thinks he’s waiting for something. 

(A push, so he could pull.)

Imayoshi asks about her and him, and Aomine gives him a look that settles the discussion before it begins. He doesn’t need to be told that something is going awfully, awfully wrong. He’s misjudged her, and he realises that he’s never known Momoi – or rather, he’s known a part of her, and assumed it was all of who she is. 

(The emotions keep growing, and he thinks – fuck.)

-x-

He dreams of her again, and it’s of the most vulgar kind.

He dreams of kissing her until her lips are sore, of tearing away her clothes so he could hold her close, feel her against his skin. 

He dreams of apologising in seared kisses on her jaw and breasts and between her legs, in tight embraces and gentle rocks and hard thrusts. 

He dreams of fucking her, making love – 

He wakes up, and the darkness closes over him. It’s one that nags at every iota of his being, reminding him that he is empty, empty, empty, and his chest tightens again and it hurts, hurts, hurts.

-x-

The next time they talk to each other, it’s because he is seeking, asking for a fight.

(Their natural state of being, he thinks, because he isn’t a talker.)

She’s asked the coach to bench him for the Rakuzan game, and fuck, he’s angry, but more than anything, he’s relieved to have found a reason to seek her out. When it goes so poorly that she runs away bordering on tears, he realises he’s a fucking idiot.

(He considers second chances,

and how many people could get,

and when they know they’re out of them.)

-x-

He’s distracted the rest of the night, and is thankful his parents aren’t home because he’s not interested in dodging more questions about whether he walked home with Momoi. 

The gravity of the truth sets on him – that his relationship with her is beyond repair, that somewhere along the line, he’d lost her. He lists all the reasons he should’ve seen it coming, and counteracts them with all the ways he could make it up to her, but none could ever measure up to how much she’s done for him. How could they possibly come back from this?

The knock on the door startles him, but her presence when he opens it surprises him more. She’s hardly stepped in enough for him to close the door behind her when she begins.

‘Apologise.’ She demands.

He raises his brow, because he did not expect the opportunity to literally come to his doorstep. His mind muddles, and feels slow.

‘Apologise,’ she says again, ‘for everything. I gave up everything for you. I was there for you, always. Even when you treated me like shit. Apologise, because if you don’t, I’m not going to come back.’

‘I’m sorry, Satsuki.’ He says it because it’s real, because he feels like the fucking sorriest man on the planet, and because he desperately wants her, needs her back. 

(Needs her back? What is she, your fucking girlfriend?)

He says it again, and he hears the strain in his voice (fuck could she hear it too?), and he reaches for her, because his fingers are twitching, keening to touch something (her).

She pushes it away, and it’s not enough, and the tirade rings in his ears. ‘I hate you, and I’m sick of faking that I don’t. I regret following you to Touou. I regret all of it!’

But despite her angry words, he sees the unshed tears in her eyes, the pain in them that is begging him to be better. The words left unsaid echo in his ribcage, and he has no answer. How could he be better? Is that hatred? He doesn’t know.

What he does know is that he’s reaching for her again, and this time, she doesn’t push him away. She welcomes his urgent kisses, never mind that their teeth clash painfully and he feels the sting on his lip. Never mind that they’re in his living room, and his parents could return any minute – he takes her against the wall. Her nails scrape up his back and into his hair, her thighs tightened around his hips in a way that drives him wild, and he does everything he’s done to her in his dreams. 

Her gasps in his ear make him shudder, and he kisses her with all the pent-up anger – at her, himself, at the world – he feels. His hunger startles him, because he can’t believe he’s missed her this fucking much in just a week. 

(He’s pathetic, he knows, but ten minutes ago, he thought this relationship was in the pits, and now, he’s rutting against her. What the fuck is wrong with them?

He doesn’t know that either. He just knows that he won’t let her regret it. He makes it good, because he can’t lose her again.)

-x-

He doesn’t realise he’s afraid of her response the next morning until she greets him as though nothing happened at all. He thinks it’s better than the alternative.

The day at school passes as normal, but he doesn’t want normal. That night, he knocks on her window, and the pause she gives at seeing him strikes an insecurity he’s never felt – and then she’s letting him in.

She doesn’t need to cry for him to see that she wants to, and he knows it’s because of him.

(He’s always causing her more pain. Always more.)

He doesn’t know what to do about that either, but he kisses her in a way he couldn’t kiss her the night before. The hunger is there, but in no rish. He needs to show her he cares, needs to prove that this is more than a one-time thing, needs to…he needs her. 

The kiss turns passionate because she makes it, and he follows her lead. He makes good on his promise that it’s good enough that she can’t regret it, and finds himself pathetic that this is all he could offer.

-x-

She used to call him ‘Dai-chan’. It wasn’t a particularly nice nickname, and he never liked it, but she would say it like she loved it. That was before, at Teiko. He realises later a lot of their relationship was left in middle school, and what they became after was a car spinning its wheels in the mud. 

Despite the new facet to their relationship, they don’t feel like they’ve made much progress. They still fight and argue, and still act like nothing has changed. Others would be none the wiser, because the look in Momoi’s eyes hasn’t changed. The sadness is there, and sometimes he thinks it’s a reflection of his own.

It’s taken him long enough to admit that his life is not it. Not satisfying, or fun, or enjoyable. Perhaps he’d taken from Momoi’s happiness when she’d experienced it, but even that was so long ago that Aomine doesn’t remember the feeling anymore. The closest he gets is in the moments after they climax, in the hollow of her collarbone where he breathes her in and numbs his mind to all else. And then he pulls away, and there it is again, the sadness that he can’t take away. 

What a fucking tragedy. She’s his light, and yet he can’t be hers. Amidst all the confusion in his life – about basketball, about school, about his feelings – what hasn’t been confusing is her. His constant, and she fills his head with warm static, and his stomach feels off, or just right, when he looks at her. 

He pulls away, and wonders what she thinks when she looks at him.

-x-

She lets him take her everywhere – in locker rooms, and closets, and showers – and in every position – above her, beneath her, behind her – but he thinks that she does more of the taking. 

‘Is this us now?’ She asks one time as she buttons up her shirt in the locker room afterhours.

‘I don’t know what ‘us’ is,’ he murmurs. He thinks ‘anything’ is better than ‘nothing.’

‘It’s you thinking you can have me whenever you please.’

Well, ‘fuck that’ then. 

She leaves before he could think of anything to say. 

(How could he say that he’d drop the world – fuck, even a game against Akashi – if she’d have him.)

-x-

The game is inconsequential, and so is the opposing team. What isn’t inconsequential is after, when he pulls her to him when they’re alone. She grasps his hands, where his fingers are at her buttons, and holds tight.

They stand in the silence, and the pressure builds in his ears because this is it. He knows it, because her grasp is tightening, and her breath is shaking. 

‘I – I can’t. I’m sorry.’ 

She leaves, and somewhere between feeling what could only be heartbreak and the pulsing of where her fingers tightened over his, he realises he’s always the one to watch her leave. 

-x-

Sometimes, Aomine thinks he isn’t alive, and it’s only the thumping of his heart that reminds him he’s not dead.

Without Momoi, life is little else than going through the motions, something he does well. Something he never minded before. Now, he keenly feels the missing part of him, and knows she holds it in the palm of her hand, squeezing it as she pleases. 

(It’s when he sees her look at Kuroko, smile at others in a way that she hasn’t at him in a long time, in the way she hasn’t met his gaze, or called his name, since that day.)

He thinks – how have they come to this, and how can he go back? 

-x-

He begins to dream of her again. They’re full of endless possibilities.

The one where he never speaks to her again, and they move on without another word. He makes a life without her in it, and perhaps it won’t be a bad one.

The one where he demands she explain how she could keep treating him like this (yes, he sees the irony, even in his dreams.)

The one where they make up, and their kiss feels like the real first one. (This is his favourite, because they kiss, and fuck, and bicker, and make love, and eat meals and walk home together every day for the rest of time – to their own home, together.)

The one where they remain on cordial terms, the intimate history between them forgotten. (It’s his least favourite, because he sees her get married to someone else, and sees himself decades later on his deathbed, alone and weighed down by disappointment.)

-x-

Life is dull, and grey, and without a heartbeat – until it no longer isn’t. 

He’s in the match against Seirin, and for the first time in who even knows how long anymore, he feels his heart thud painfully, and he can’t catch his breath, and his skin is ablaze. 

A part of him is enraged, and another is ignited with excitement – the former for how Kuroko and Kagami dare think they could beat him, and the later for the possibility that they could. What…what if they could? 

And when it happens, amidst the slowing of time and the shock, the tremble in his hand and the sound of his blood humming in his ears, he feels the darkness that encompassed him for so long slowly drift away. 

‘You won, Kuroko,’ he says.

He’s angry. 

Kuroko won.

He’s startled.

Kuroko won. 

He’s…relieved. 

And when Kuroko extends his fist and Aomine bumps it with his own, it’s as though time resumes, and sound returns. He hears and sees as clear as ever – and he sees her, on the side of the court, watching him.

Kuroko won.

He lost.

He…lost.

-x-

After the match, she finds him outside, watching the night sky. He’s half there because he can’t stand to be around others most times after matches anyway, and half waiting for her, because the Thing That Cannot Happen happened, and whether they’re speaking or not, he knows she would want to see him. 

She approaches with a tentative look, her eyes soft and mouth thinned. ‘What’re you doing?’ 

‘Nothing.’

‘Are you okay?’

Ah, the million dollar question. He doesn’t know if he is – when does he ever really know anything? – but he knows he will be, soon. 

He sighs, and she seems to take it as a reproach because she steps away. 

‘Satsuki,’ he murmurs, and she turns back. 

‘Hmm?’

‘Will you go shopping with me tomorrow?’

Her immediate reaction is confusion, and then the fury bubbles up, and he could see she’s about to give it to him.

He sits up. ‘I want to buy new basketball shoes.’

Her mouth closes, the tirade dying on her tongue. She looks at him, really looks at him. And in between that and her next words, she smiles – a real smile that tells him all the others she’d given him were not. A true smile that tells him that despite everything, they are going to be okay. It’s the smile that unlocks a keening truth he’s denied for so long (or perhaps he just didn’t understand it).

He loves her. 

‘Of course, Dai-chan.’ 

His chest fills with warmth, and he could laugh. In all his dreams, he’d never imagined this.

-x-

A new form of normal settles over Aomine. One where he goes to practise, and squabbles with Wakamatsu, and helps Momoi shop rather than being dragged along. He sits with his parents and converses, and helps Kuroko learn to shoot, and is surprised that the best kind of life is the one helping others. One where the future looks bright, and is something to look forward to. 

For the first time in years, Aomine is truly at peace. 

-x-

He still dreams of her – sweet, dirty, innocent, forbidden dreams.

In reality, he becomes her friend once again, but in a way, for the first time. 

(Even friendships, he sees, come with responsibilities, ones that Momoi has carried out towards him without reciprocation on his part for far too many years.) 

(The problem is, friendship with Momoi has long since stopped being enough.)

-x- 

He sees her with Kuroko, and they’re doing absolutely nothing of import or significance. It’s not a date – Kuroko would never, and Momoi has stopped wanting that, Aomine thinks – but it’s an intimate sort of meal, and he sees them through the restaurant window, talking and smiling. 

His mind wanders to familiar territory – where did he go wrong? – and a new one – she’s so beautiful. He doesn’t know where the second thought came from, but it still makes more sense to think that Satsuki is beautiful than it is to say that Aomine has learnt his lesson with her.

He enters the restaurant (because of course he does, he can’t let a thing slide), and considers himself blessed for coming in on the end of their meal. 

‘Should I walk you home, Satsuki?’ He asks.

She readily agrees, and excuses herself to the bathroom first.

‘Ready to finally give her a chance?’ He says to Kuroko jokingly.

Kuroko looks at him oddly, wipes his mouth with a napkin. ‘I think that’s a question best suited to you, Aomine-kun.’

Aomine has nothing to say to that. 

‘I’ve run out of those,’ Aomine muses. (He doesn’t think Kuroko can hear the strain in his voice.)

‘I’ve never known Momoi-san to be that kind of person.’

‘What?’

‘The kind who stops giving chances.’

‘Shut up, Tetsu.’

And yet, the walk home feels different. She chatters away about the team’s new stats, and about the great weather (‘spring really is the best season, isn’t it, Dai-chan?’). He agrees and nods, and thinks that there is a different taste to the air, like he is on a precipice. 

‘Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow, Dai-chan.’ She smiles.

Aomine makes it as far as his own doorstep when he stops. It’s a combination of things – the fact that his parents’ shoes aren’t at the door, and the fact that Kuroko’s words resonate more than they should’ve, and the fact that he feels a type of courage bleed through him that he thinks he’ll never muster again.

(He thinks about the ever-present disappointment he feels around her, and how he thinks it was never about going back to what it used to be at all. This is what they used to be, wasn’t it? He wants to move forward now – with her. A new forward.)

Before he knows it, he’s at Momoi’s door.

‘Do you mind if we talk?’ 

Momoi raises a brow, but steps aside. ‘Sure.’

The door closes, and they stand across each other in silence. The hum of the dishwasher is on, and the carpet is wooly under his feet, and his skin suddenly tingles with heat and the distinct awareness that she is close enough to touch.

(They haven’t been alone in so long.)

‘I have a lot things to say to you.’ He says. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever run out of them. Apologies, and gratitude, and wishes for what was and could’ve been.’

She freezes, and he realises it’s the first time they’ve ever even alluded to it. 

‘I’m sorry, Satsuki. I was twisted, and self-destructive, and arrogant. You treated me with more kindness than I deserved.’

She cracks a smile, but it does little to the tension he doesn’t realise he’s holding himself in. ‘You’re no less arrogant.’

‘Yeah, maybe not.’ His throat is dry, and his stomach turns like he’s sick, and he idly wonders how anybody survives this feeling. ‘Did I ever make you feel like you had to?’

She slowly shakes her head.

‘Did I ever make it unenjoyable for you? I never wanted to.’

‘You never did.’

‘Yeah, good.’ He nods, and supposes that is at least something. ‘I didn’t know what I wanted, or how I wanted it. I just knew I needed you there. In any way possible. It was all falling apart.’

‘I know,’ she says sadly.

‘You hated me.’

‘I know.’

‘Do you still?’

‘No.’

‘Yeah, yeah, good. Satsuki, you…’ He takes a breath, a quiet one, but he sees her watching him carefully. ‘You’re the best thing in my life. You’re it for me. I don’t know how I could undo how we started, but I want to. If that – if you think we could move forward, tell me how.’

She takes a shaky breath, and he sees her throat move as she swallows. ‘What are you saying?’

‘You know what I’m saying.’

He steps forward, slowly takes her elbow and pulls her in with a gentle tug. ‘I’ve been stupid. I couldn’t be what you need, not as a friend, or anything else. But I want to prove that I can.’

‘You’re not a relationship guy,’ she murmurs. 

‘You changed my mind.’

‘You don’t really want a relationship with me.’

‘You have no idea.’ 

Her lower lip trembles, and he lowers his face to hers, slow and seeking permission. He stops, because even though he wants her – god, he wants her more than anything – he wants her to want him too. 

She meets him in the middle in a chaste kiss, soft, and gentle. He doesn’t realise his hands are trembling until she takes it into hers.

‘Is a kiss like that okay?’ She asks softly.

Of course it’s okay, but he can’t speak. He gazes at her, wondering how he could ever be enough. He’s grateful she’s smarter, braver than he is, because she must see the thing in his face that tells her he really, really wants her to do it again.

When their lips meet for the second time, he cradles her neck, wanting to consume her, and she pulls him closer by his collar, and he wishes they could get closer. He didn’t intend to take her to bed, but that’s the direction they find themselves going in, knocking into furniture and stumbling over stairs.

It’s passionate – god, it’s been so long – and he’s unable to take his mouth from hers, so intent on getting what she gives, of leaving her as breathless as she does him. When it all becomes too much, she pulls her to him, chest to chest, and he holds her so tight he could barely tell where he starts and she ends. They rock together in a furiously rising tide, and he clasps her fingers, her shoulders, her back, like she’s the only thing holding him together.

When she lets out a soft cry in his ear, he loses himself in the sound, thrusts until the light overtakes his vision and he shakes in her arms. When his heartbeat settles, he only sees the dark of the room, smells the sweetness of her skin, and hears Momoi’s breathless laugh as she holds him close.

-x-

It’s almost dawn, and Momoi knows she should wake him up before the sun rises to avoid the risk of one of her parents walking in on them. The rationale of the thought is drowned out by the warmth and bliss she feels, tucked against Aomine chest. 

Her back to him, she clings to the arm that’s closed around her, and relishes in the deep breaths he releases against her ear. It’s more than she could’ve ever imagined. Aomine has become so much more than she could’ve ever imagined.

She wonders how she could’ve clung so much to the past, when what they needed was something else. In place of where the thought of the future felt bleak and miserable, she only sees hope, and an Aomine that smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I hope that is the ending you wanted to see! These two deserve the world. 
> 
> My intention with this fic was to explore the detrimental effects of Aomine's change on his relationship with Momoi. I always hated how the show never let us in on how their dynamic really changed after Teiko, and how they found peace after Aomine loses for the first time. He was a shit head for sure, and I wanted to show a personal look at how he stopped being that. 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed! Leave a kudos and a comment if you wanna let me know what you guys think! I'd love to know whether you guys ever saw these two in the same way I did.

**Author's Note:**

> This is part one of a two-part story. The second chapter will follow Aomine in the aftermath. Does that guy confuse anybody else? Goddamn.


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